Mona Lisa Overdrive

Then it seemed like the crowd had melded behind her, a curved, sliding wall of bodies, and the three who faced her on the fountain rim jumped out like a picture. Fat girl with black-dyed hair, mouth half-open like it stayed that way, tits spilling out of a red rubber halter; blonde with a long face and a thin blue slash of lipstick, hand like a bird's claw sprouting a cigarette; man with his oiled arms bare to the cold, graft-job muscle knotted like rock under synthetic tan and bad jail tattoos ...

"Hey, bitch," cried the fat girl, with a kind of glee, "hope y'don't think y'go

The blonde looked at Mona with her tired eyes and gave her a wan grin, an it's-not-my-fault grin, and then looked away.

The pimp came up off the fountain like something driven by springs, but Mona was already moving, cued by the blonde's expression. He had her arm, but the raincoat's plastic seam gave way and she elbowed her way back into the crowd. The wiz took over and the next thing she knew she was at least a block away, sagging against a steel pole, coughing and hyperventilating.

But now the wiz was all turned around, the way it went sometimes, and everything was ugly. The faces in the crowd were driven and hungry-looking, like they all had their own private desperate errands to run, and the light from the shop windows was cold and mean, and all the things behind the glass were just there to tell her she couldn't have them. There was a voice somewhere, an angry child's voice stringing obscenities together in an endless, meaningless chain; when she realized who it was, she stopped doing it.

Her left arm was cold. She looked down and saw that the sleeve was gone, the seam down her side torn open to the waist. She took off the coat and draped it over her shoulders like a cape; maybe that made it a little harder to notice.

She braced her back against the pole as the wiz rolled over her on a wave of delayed adrenaline; her knees started to buckle and she thought she was going to faint, but then the wiz pulled one of its tricks and she was crouching in summer sunset light in the old man's dirt yard, the flaky gray earth scribed with the game she'd been playing, but now she was just hunched there, vacant, staring off past the bulks of the tanks to where fireflies pulsed in the blackberry tangle above a twisted old chassis. There was light behind her from the house and she could smell the cornbread baking and the coffee he boiled and reboiled there, till a spoon stood up in it, he said, and he'd be in there now reading one of his books, crumbly brown leaves, never a page with a corner on it, he got 'em in frayed plastic baggies and sometimes they just fell to dust in his hands, but if he found something he wanted to keep he'd get a little pocket copier out of the drawer, fit the batteries in it, run it down the page. She liked to watch the copies spool out all fresh, with their special smell that faded away, but he'd never let her work it. Sometimes he'd read out loud, a kind of hesitation in his voice, like a man trying to play an instrument he hasn't picked up in a long time. They weren't stories he read, not like they had endings or told a joke. They were like windows into something so strange; he never tried to explain any of it, probably didn't understand it himself, maybe nobody did ...

Then the street snapped back hard and bright.

She rubbed her eyes and coughed.

12 - Antarctica Starts Here

"I'm ready now," Piper Hill said, eyes closed, seated on the carpet in a loose approximation of the lotus position. "Touch the spread with your left hand." Eight slender leads trailed from the sockets behind Piper's ears to the instrument that lay across her ta

Angie, wrapped in a white terry robe, faced the blond technician from the edge of the bed, the black test unit covering her forehead like a raised blindfold. She did as she was told, ru

"Good," Piper said, more to herself than to Angie, touching something on the board. "Again." Angie felt the weave thicken beneath her fingertips.

"Again." Another adjustment.

She could distinguish the individual fibers now, know silk from linen ...

"Again."

Her nerves screamed as her flayed fingertips grated against steel wool, ground glass ...

"Optimal," Piper said, opening blue eyes. She produced a tiny ivory vial from the sleeve of her kimono, removed its stopper, passed the vial to Angie.

Closing her eyes, Angie sniffed cautiously. Nothing.

"Again."

Something floral. Violets?

"Again."

Her head flooded with a nauseating greenhouse reek.

"Olfactory's up," Piper said, as the choking odor faded.

"Haven't noticed." She opened her eyes. Piper was offering her a tiny round of white paper. "As long as it's not fish," Angie said, licking the tip of her finger. She touched the dot of paper, raised her finger to her tongue. One of Piper's tests had once put her off seafood for a month.

"It's not fish," Piper said, smiling. She kept her hair short, a concise little helmet that played up the graphite gleam of the sockets inset behind either ear. Saint Joan in silicone, Porphyre said, and Piper's true passion seemed to be her work. She was Angie's personal technician, reputed to be the Net's best troubleshooter.

Caramel ...

"Who else is here, Piper?" Having completed the Usher, Piper was zipping her board into a fitted nylon case.

Angie had heard a helicopter arrive an hour earlier; she'd heard laughter, footsteps on the deck, as the dream receded. She'd abandoned her usual attempt to inventory sleep -- if it could be called sleep, the other's memories washing in, filling her, then draining away to levels she couldn't reach, leaving these afterimages ...

"Raebel," Piper said, "Lomas, Hickman, Ng, Porphyre, the Pope."

"Robin?"

"No."

"Continuity," she said, showering.

"Good morning, Angie."

"Freeside torus. Who owns it?"

"The torus has been renamed Mustique II by the current joint owners, the Julia

"Who owned it when Tally taped there?"

"Tessier-Ashpool S.A."

"I want to know more about Tessier-Ashpool."

"Antarctica starts here."

She stared up through the steam at the white circle of the speaker. "What did you just say?"

"Antarctica Starts Here is a two-hour video study of the Tessier-Ashpool family by Hans Becker, Angie."

"Do you have it?"

"Of course. David Pope accessed it recently. He was quite impressed."

"Really? How recently?"

"Last Monday."

"I'll see it tonight, then."

"Done. Is that all?"

"Yes."

"Goodbye, Angie."

David Pope. Her director. Porphyre said that Robin was telling people she heard voices. Had he told Pope? She touched a ceramic panel; the spray grew hotter. Why was Pope interested in Tessier-Ashpool? She touched the panel again and gasped under needles of suddenly frigid water.

Inside out, outside in, the figures of that other landscape arriving soon, too soon ...

Porphyre was posed by the window when she entered the living room, a Masai warrior in shoulder-padded black silk crepe and black leather sarong. The others cheered when they saw her, and Porphyre turned and gri

"Took us by surprise," Rick Raebel said, sprawled on the pale couch. He was effects and editing. "Hilton figured you'd want more of a break."

"They pulled us in from all over, dear," Kelly Hickman added. "I was in Bremen, and the Pope was up the well in full art mode, weren't you, David?" He looked to the director for confirmation.